


Socks

by commodorecliche



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Clothes, Desert aesthetic, M/M, Pining, Post-Kerberos Mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 20:09:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10045463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commodorecliche/pseuds/commodorecliche
Summary: There's a mirage in the desert - a figure that calls to him from out in the distance and tells him it isn't over, that he isn't gone yet.Keith just doesn't know how much longer he can believe the lie.





	

**Author's Note:**

> short drabble for [opallight](http://opallight.tumblr.com)'s prompt, "socks".

After Shiro disappears, there’s a stretch of time in which his absence feels more theoretical than definite. Keith isn’t sure if it’s denial, or just that he had already begun to grow accustomed to the emptiness in the shack in the wake of Shiro’s departure for Kerberos. The permanence of his absence takes a while to feel real.

But even as the weeks and months tick by, even as the lines between _gone on a mission_ and _gone forever_ began to blur, it never truly becomes something that Keith is ready to accept.

He has dreams sometimes where Shiro is standing far out on the horizon - his image distorted by waves and waves of desert heat - and calls out for Keith. He tells Keith to be ready, to be waiting, that he’ll be home some day. Dreams are hardly better than mirages, and Keith knows that, but the thought alone is comforting enough.

He keeps Shiro’s things as they always were. Vests and shirts and pants all hung up neatly in the closet, the same as they were the day Shiro left with the promise that he’d be back before Keith knew it. He keeps his boots on the floor in the closet, socks individually folded across the laces, ready and waiting for feet - size 13 - to come home and slip them on again.

It takes months before he gives in and takes them all out to wash. Months of gathering dust and regrets before Keith finally admits to himself that the last vestiges of Shiro’s scents are all but gone from these garments. He washes them with precise mixtures, anything at all to try to mimic the man that used to live here by his side. And when he hangs them back up, he does so with care, attentive to their creases and folds and angles. He sets those boots back down and drapes those socks across their laces once again with the hope that perhaps tomorrow, they’ll get worn again.

But they don’t.

There’s a mirage in the desert - a figure that calls to him from out in the distance and tells him it isn’t over, that he isn’t gone yet.

Keith just doesn’t know how much longer he can believe the lie.  

**Author's Note:**

> lmfao told ya i could make 'socks' angsty. 
> 
> Rebloggable version [here](http://commodorecliche.tumblr.com/post/157888144033/sheith-socks-please). 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
